Amida Buddha
Amida nyorai (the Buddha Amitabha), the Buddha of Pure Light, is the closest entity to the Western idea of God that we find in Japanese Buddhism. Statues of Amida abound ...
Amitābha-Sūtra
One of the three basic sūtras of the Pure Land School (with Amitāyurdhyāna-Sūtra and Sukhāvatīvyūha). It survives in Chinese translations, and describes the fundamental practice of reciting ...
Amitāyurdhyāna-Sūtra
(‘Sūtra on Contemplation on Amitāyus’). One of the three basic sūtras of the Pure Land School (with Amitābha-Sūtra and Sukhāvatīvyūha). It describes the pure land and the moral life which prepares ...
Buddhas
A buddha is literally a person who has moved from the stage of pre-enlightenment (arhat) to that of having been enlightened, or awakened to ultimate reality. The Sanskrit/Pali term “buddhi,” ...
Buddhist Cosmology
The so-called three-world system is a prominent one in Buddhist thought. The ancient Theravāda Buddhist (see Theravāda Buddhism) tradition saw a flat world with Heaven above and Hell below. Later, a ...
Ennin
(794–864).Early Tendai monk and third abbot of the Enryakuji.the main temple and headquarters of the school on Mt. Hiei. He began training with Tendai founder Saichō at age 15. In 838 he travelled to ...
Hōnen
(1133–1212).Founder of the Jōdo Shū.or Pure Land school, in medieval Japan. Hōnen was born into a locally prominent family, and lost his father at an early age when a manager of nearby imperial ...
Jigoku
A name for Hell as opposed to gokuraku (paradise) in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (see Pure Land Buddhism, Japanese Afterlife).
Jōdo Shinshū
(Jap., ‘True Pure Land School’).A school of Japanese Buddhism founded by Shinran, and organized by Rennyo (1414–99). It is a lay movement, with no monks or monasteries, and it ...
Namu Amida Butsu
The Japanese pronunciation of the ‘six-character form’ of the nembutsu.or oral invocation of the Buddha Amitābha. The phrase means ‘Hail to Amitābha Buddha’, and is chanted or recited by Japanese ...
nembutsu
The term ‘nembutsu’ (Chin., nien-fo) refers to several practices oriented toward Amitābha.the Buddha of the western Pure Land. The ambiguity of the first of the two Chinese characters (‘nem’) has ...
Nichiren
A Japanese Buddhist sect founded by the religious teacher Nichiren (1222–82) with the Lotus Sutra as its central scripture. There are more than 30 million followers in more than forty subsects, the ...
Nien-fo
(Chin.; Jap., nembutsu).The foremost religious practice in the Pure Land schools of Buddhism: see NEMBUTSU.
Pai-lien tsung
‘White Lotus School’, a school of Pure Land Buddhism, founded by Hui-yüan in 402 ce, and developed by Mao Tzu-yuan, of the Tʾien-tʾai school, in the 12th cent. ce. It ...
patriarch
An office or institution in east Asian Buddhism that replicates traditional kinship relations in order to legitimize a teaching lineage. In secular terms, a ‘patriarch’ (Chin., tsu) is the ...
Pratyutpanna Sūtra
The short title of the early Mahāyāna sūtra whose full name is the Pratyutpanna-buddha-saṃmukha-avasthita-sāmadhi Sūtra. The work describes a trance (samādhi) which, when perfected, leads to a direct ...
Pure Land
The term ‘Pure Land’ is a Chinese invention, but it refers to a concept long known in Buddhism under other names such as Buddha-land or Buddha-field (Skt., Buddha-kṣetra). The idea arose in India ...
Rennyo
(1415–99).An eighth-generation grandson of Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of the Japanese Pure Land school of Jōdo Shinshū. Rennyo is widely credited with the revival of the school and the ...
Sukhāvatīvyūha
(Skt., sukhāvatī, ‘place of happiness’, + vyūha, ‘description’).A Buddhist Mahāyāna scripture. A sūtra of the early Ratnakūṭa collection, it is also known as Amitābhavyūha, Amitābhaparivarta, or ...
